Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

by David Frum

The executive office of the president has until now almost always been staffed by committed people who take their jobs highly seriously. There are few slackers at a White House. The smallest jobs must be done with the greatest care; a future election can turn on whether the president has offended a local notable by mispronouncing her husband’s name. The Trump White House is a mess of careless slobs. At the highest levels, one sees mutual sabotage, easily decoded “on background” name-calling, false filings of disclosure documents, and institutionalized lying about readily ascertainable facts. The failure of leadership at the top contaminates the whole enterprise. Even the most routine work product of the Trump White House is strewn with errors of spelling, fact, and protocol, sometimes of quite serious consequence. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star compiled a list of some thirty such goofs. The funniest was perhaps a July 12, 2017, release attacking the accuracy of the Congressional Budget Office that misspelled the word “inaccurately” as “innacurately.”